CASTRIES, St Lucia (AP) - Two more slayings have put this small island nation on track to break last year's record number of homicides, officials said Tuesday.
The shootings, which authorities suspect were drug-related, brought the number of homicides this year to 33 - just four short of the total for all of last year, police said."This is a worrying trend, because it indicates that the young are resorting to violence to settle differences," police spokesman Modestus Louis said.
St Lucia recorded less than 10 homicides a year until 1998. The figures have been steadily rising each year in this former British colony of 162,000 people.
Police blame much of the violence on drug trafficking. A US State Department report this year called St Lucia a "well-used transshipment site for cocaine from South America" that is smuggled to the United States and Europe.
